"I think he is the person he's pretending to be."

"You'd think his life expectancy is six weeks."

"Which begs the obvious question of why he isn't dead."

"That's not what 'begging the question' means."

Joan makes a face and pokes her. "You know what I mean."

"Sometimes people get lucky?"

Mariam and I have an understanding, Joan doesn't say, that if we ever go to Los Angeles you will be kept far away from Walker's men, because it would be a headache for her if I had to kill half of the LA cult.

"Sometimes."

"I wouldn't get to meet the versions of James who died."

"Mm. -- I am happy for you." Among other things.

"You know," Inaaya says, "my life expectancy would be longest if I went back home to India."

"Which you aren't going to do. I know." Walker's men still don't get to have you and it is still my job to keep you as safe as I can and chickadee, you're scaring me remain unsaid.

"There's no point in staying alive if I don't get to do the things that make it worthwhile to be alive."

"I'm not going to stop you. I just --"

"I know."

"I can take care of myself."

"I have not forgotten that you can kill people with your brain."

It's not really funny. But it's fine.

On April eighth when Oswald wakes up he finds a tear in the wallpaper.

For a moment, a fleshy shark-toothed mouth pressing through from the other side of the wall, oozing amber juice from its broken lips. No sooner has he seen it, though, than it recedes and disappears, leaving curled and crusted wallpaper behind.

Ah. So this is what it's like to be haunted by mouths.

Somehow worse than he expected.

"Why does this always happen to me," Lev says, reading a book in Latin.

He's going to get up and lean on him. Be a comforting and mildly haunted presence.

"I think," Lev announces, "sometime in the next ten years I should not be constantly haunted by mouths."

"I think they're haunting me now too. The other day I saw one that said Lacie's name."

"Fun.

Back at the asylum everyone saw them."

"Maybe we'll stop them. Someday."

He does not sound like he believes this will happen.

"Yeah."

Meanwhile--

The next time Inaaya and Mordred see each other they go to an art museum and then to a bookstore. Mordred isn't scrupulously avoiding the topic of the cult, per se, but they wind up not talking about it; they're both aware that they'd rather talk about other things.

Inaaya looks at all the art and compares it to the art she's seen other places on her travels.

She's not impressed by the Indian-influenced art by Europeans but she does have questions about what's depicted in the pictures! It's not that she doesn't know anything about European history, it's just that her knowledge is very specialized; the only Roman god she's heard of is Neptune.